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Float like a drone, pollinate like a bee

Bees carry out important work by pollinating flowers—they move pollen from one part of the flower to another or between flowers. They contribute something like $29 billion dollars to the farm economy in the US alone. For a number of reasons the bee population is in decline and that is bad. One solution to the loss of these important pollinators are tiny drones that are built to go from flower to flower where they pick up and drop off pollen. Scientists in Japan lead by Eijiro Miyako at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Nanomaterial Research Institute have designed and tested a tiny drone that can pollinate flowers. The drone has material that acts like the tiny hairs on a bee and collect the pollen then deposit it elsewhere. We hope that there is a way to save the real bees but in the meantime this is a cool solution.